“North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.” Donald Trump, Tuesday, August 8
“The DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) should cease any consideration of actions that would lead to the end of its regime and the destruction of its people.” James Mattis, Wednesday, August 9
“If anything, maybe that [fire and fury] statement wasn’t tough enough. The people of this country should be very comfortable, and I will tell you this: If North Korea does anything in terms of thinking about attack, or anybody that we love or we represent or our allies or us, they can be very, very nervous. I’ll tell you why, and they should be very nervous. Because things will happen to them like they never thought possible.” Donald Trump, Thursday, August 10
No, the people of this country should not be comfortable with our government ranting and raving about the annihilation of the North Korean people.
No, we should not be comfortable with the morally unconscionable conceit that these are reasonable threats issued by reasonable, legitimate rulers.
No, we should not be comfortable with the largest military power in the world bullying a small, isolated country and terrorizing the people of that entire region.
No, we should not be comfortable with the disgusting media frenzy, full of lies and distortion, that marches us toward not just another invasion of a small country but a nuclear attack that can wipe out millions of people in one day and threaten the future of life on earth.
This is a nightmare. It is a nightmare for the Korean people and a nightmare for humanity. If we allow this regime to continue to escalate its attacks, even if we were to somehow, doubtfully, survive the short and long term effects of a nuclear war, what would it do to our own moral fiber? How can we expect any future for our own children when we’ve allowed our leaders to incinerate other people’s children? This is a morally bankrupt position, and too many good people are swayed by this belief that the U.S has the moral authority to decide which countries get to arm themselves with nuclear weapons and which countries do not.
Nuclear weapons are heinous, but here is a fact that the media never points out. There is only one country that has dropped nuclear bombs on civilians, killing hundreds of thousands of people. Not North Korea. Not Iraq. Not Iran. Only the U.S. has ever actually used its nuclear weapons to terrorize a people in order to bring a country to its knees.
And nothing would allow the Trump Pence regime to consolidate its fascist authority faster than a war on this scale. This quote, from Robert O. Paxton’s book The Anatomy of Fascism, crystallizes how essential war is to the “radicalization” of fascism and escalation toward the final stage of fascist logic – the mass genocide of men, women, and children: “It seems clear that both Hitler and Mussolini deliberately chose war as a necessary step in realizing the full potential of their regimes. They wanted to use war to harden internal society as well as to conquer vital space. Hitler told Goebbels, ‘the war … made possible for us the solution of a whole series of problems that could never have been solved in normal times.’”
Yes, that war led to the downfall of Hitler and Mussolini at the cost of millions of lives, but Hitler and Mussolini didn’t have nuclear weapons. As horrific as World War II was, they did not have the firepower to bring about the destruction of the planet and human extinction. The American Empire, with these lunatic fascists at the helm, has nothing less than that power to end life on earth.
People need to dig into the actual history of what the U.S. has done on the Korean peninsula. There is much propaganda and precious few sources out there to help Americans gain a truer understanding of this, but the future of humanity depends on us refusing to parrot the war cries of the Trump regime and starting to think critically.
But even without a full understanding of this history, it is past the time for people of conscience in this country to discard the hateful belief that American lives are more important than other people’s lives. In the face of our government’s condescension and bullying toward other nations, we should always counter with Humanity First, Not America First, refusing to step in line with the American imperialist war machine. And we need to get into the streets to demand, once and for all, that this fascist regime must go. This nightmare must end. What on earth are we waiting for?
August 19, Regional Conferences
to Prepare and Plan for November 4
Recommended Reading:
Behind the Madness of Trump’s Threats of “Fire and Fury” in Korea